Posted on Apr 04, 2008 - 1:42am by John P. in Photography, Travel

George Lawrence used aerial kites to photograph San Francisco after the devastating 1906 earthquake. His photographs appeared in newspapers around the world and generated more than $15,000 for the photographer.
Below is a high resolution GigaPixel scan from the original 4 foot wide photograph. Well, technically it’s only a measly 11,709 x 4,716 resolution - translating to only .55 gigapixels, but we’ll let it slide since this is for posterity’s sake and all that.
For those of you who are unaware, San Francisco experienced a devastating earthquake in 1906 which started fires that burned uncontrollably and essentially destroyed the entire city.
To use the panorama, click inside the photo below, then you can use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out, and click and drag within the photo to move it around. If your mouse doesn’t have a scroll wheel, just use the zoom bar in the top left corner of the picture to zoom in and out.
I use the "No Adverts for Friends" plugin by Donncha O Caoimh
Thats a scary thought. I actually was in San Fran for the first time last week and checked out P39/Chinatown. Drove up HWY 1. It was amazing.
Thats a gorgeous picture
The aftetrmath was unbelievable, more unbelievable the politicians later built large parts of the current San Francisco on reclaimed land which is geologically unsound. The danger will be compounded if another quake hits with enough force.
This pic is amazing.Its in good resolution after the scan.I wont like to take a picture like this though.
That is amazing, certainly worth the 156 mb of bandwidth. Thanks John.
$15,000 in 1906 dollars, adjusted into 2006 real dollars would be between $346,788.99 and $6,376,993.31, depending upon which index you’d use.
That’d be a nice chunk of change for a couple of kites and a photograph.
amazing picture John
Ow my god. What an amazing image!…
Thanks a lot John
That is an amazing picture. I like photography and will download the full image.
the photo is worth a giant poster on my living room :-), scary though
Excellent shot of Lawrence — I have two others of his in my book on the ‘06 quake, taken three years apart. I’m using 75 panorama photos in a forthcoming book on So Cal history — all taken in the 1920s with a Cirkut camera by Edward Cochems. Great stuff. Best Regards, Douglas Westfall